[open-literature] New Members, Images and Video, Line Numbers in Introductions

[Jonathan Gray]

Thanks for the update James: all sounds great!

Regarding line numbers, I'm not sure what the current plans are, but
I've always been interested to see how we can use technology to do
better citation (e.g. linking directly to a quote, e.g. with quote
highlighted, linking directly to a line number, ...), rather than just
plain text search. As a user, I'd really love to be able to click on a
footnote, and be taken through directly to the relevant part of the
text. Would be great if it was possible to create simple, stable URLs
that would do this, and allow things like highlighting a section.

But this may not be the best thing for now. Perhaps best to do the
simplest thing that works? ;-)

All the best,

Jonathan

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 9:07 PM, Open Shakespeare
<open-shakespeare at okfn.org> wrote:
> (SUMMARY: Points for debate: How could we include image and video in
> OS? Should we use line numbers in our Introductions?)
>
> Good Evening,
>
> Quite a few things up for discussion today, the first of which comes
> after an email from Professor Hugh Richmond regarding the relationship
> between our Open Shakespeare and his website, Shakespeare's Staging
> (http://shakespeare.berkeley.edu/). This website contains a wealth of
> images and videos all recording various stagings of the Bard's works.
> As, of course, any staging is inevitably an interpretation of the
> written text, Professor Richmond's website, rather like our own,
> contains a great record of many generations' responses to Shakespeare.
> I would very much like to see such resources incorporated into the
> website, but would like your opinion on how to do it: should we build
> create a new area or incorporate a smattering of video and images into
> the sections we already have (i.e. into the short introductions
> themselves or into each play's 'home' page)? How could we link
> images/videos to plays? Could our annotation tool incorporate video
> annotation? (i.e. an annotation for 'To be or not to be' could be a
> famous performance of it)...What do you think? How hard are these
> ideas to implement?
>
> Professor Richmond is the latest member of this mailing list
> (welcome!) so do post any questions you have for him here.
>
> In other news, Rachel Thorpe has just completed her Venus and Adonis
> introduction, which currently resides in google document form until we
> upload the missing Venus and Adonis text to the website. Her
> introduction, produced collaboratively with Hazel Wilkinson, is very
> good, and I feel a little guilty in drawing attention to a rather
> minor aspect of it, namely that Rachel has included line numbers for
> all her citations. If we post this introduction as it is, then it will
> be the first to include line numbers, and so changes our approach so
> far. This need not be a bad thing: line numbers are, of course,
> required in all decent scholarly articles. The question is, do we want
> them on Open Shakespeare?
>
> My instinct is to say no, since line numbers are redundant when a
> computer can search the text for the section cited in an instant.
> Further to this, line numbers - small things though they are - distort
> our perception of the text in question, making it something far more
> anatomised than it originally was. This is particularly true in the
> case of plays, where 18th century division into acts, and scenes, as
> well as the line numbers, make the reading experience completely
> different from the experience of performance, or indeed form
> Shakespeare's own conception of his plays. Although some plays fall
> neatly into five acts, Shakespeare did not think out his plays in such
> a way.
>
> Does anyone agree with me? Do let everyone know what you think: should
> we use line numbers? Are there technical considerations here too, such
> as inserting/removing numbers in the electronic texts we are using?
>
> This is turning into a rather long message, so I'll leave it here for now.
>
> I look forward to hearing your replies,
>
> James
>
> --
> OPEN SHAKESPEARE
> 'The Marriage of Text and Technology'
> www.openshakespeare.org
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>
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-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://blog.okfn.org

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